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Continued from last week.
As confirmation that reading Nigerian newspaper is not to be recommended to the faint –hearted (or those who are afflicted with heart condition), it was Olusegun Adeniyi, Chairman of the Editorial Board of “ThisDay” newspaper who tasered us with his chilling account of the security situation in the country:
“Beyond the banditry in Zamfara”:
“While the security challenge is national, the gravity of the northern situation was brought to the fore in 2014 by respected retired federal permanent secretary, Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, who is currently the Chief of Staff to the Senate President. While lamenting how rustlers carted away his herds, he also painted a pathetic picture of the security situation in many of the northern states: “For almost 400 square kilometres, from Abuja to Kaduna, Zaria and Birnin Gwari, there is hardly any farm with cattle [left]. It is the same in most parts of Katsina and Zamfara states. The backbone of the northern economy is farming and husbandry. Not anymore. We cannot keep cattle on our farms. Large scale farming is becoming less and less attractive. A huge swathe of the north is now bandit territory…
However, that the problem is not restricted to Zamfara can be glimpsed from what is happening in Kaduna State. When in February 2014, the Emir of Birnin Gwari spoke about criminality in his domain and the activities of cattle rustlers, he said: “They are in control of one village called Jan Birni. You can’t go there now if you are not a thief. If they don’t know you, they may kill you. These rustlers don’t care whether you put fire on your cattle, they will whisk them away. If your cattle are branded, they will slaughter them, cut them up and sell them in pieces. If you go to Birnin Gwari-Funtua axis, they are gradually taking over all villages and towns along the roads. They come out on market days and brandish their weapons without a care…”
Right on cue, the Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo SAN, was on his feet – to fault Nigeria’s recent rating by Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index:
“Under President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, we have focused on fighting grand corruption
I think that by even Transparency International’s own assessment, Transparency International uses nine different indexes to come to a conclusion.
In four out of those indexes, Nigeria moved up, in another four Nigeria stabilized & dropped in only one index. So in aggregation, it (T.I) then decides that it has fallen in certain number of points below where we were.
I think the important thing to bear in mind about Nigeria’s anti-corruption fight is that the government has done what it ought to do by focusing on grand corruption.
Grand corruption is the type we experienced years before when, for example, $15 billion was lost in a defence contract. Two, three weeks to election, N100 billion in cash was taken out, and again $293 million in cash, two to three weeks to the election.
That’s the kind of impunity; and of course you are also familiar with the scam that went on in the NNPC at the time; the so called statutory contracts, that’s grand corruption. That is the corruption that crippled the economy of the country.
Let me tell you very quickly how you can recognize that we have scaled a good deal on grand corruption today: despite the fact that we are earning 60 percent less in revenue, we are actually able to spend more than ever before in the history of this country on infrastructure.
In 2017, we spent about N1.3 trillion on capital. That’s the highest in the history of the country. So, we are able to do far more with far less because we have controlled the impunity that went on, the grand corruption, and all of that.
But then, you cannot address the corruption as you go through our airports, our ports or as you go through government offices, in many cases. That’s where the whole perception emerges.
We must have a deeper and much wider way of dealing with corruption. How are you going to do that? You must have an efficient way of doing that; like automation, removing discretion from individuals,”
Asked what the institutionalized process of fighting corruption was, Osinbajo responded:
“Institutionalization is not a one-off thing, it’s a process, and we are dealing with that, that’s exactly what we are doing.
For example, the TSA and being able to look at government accounts and all of that is one way of institutionalizing a process by which you can be sure of what people are doing, how this things are happening.
The process of allowing the EFCC to do its work without dictation, saying that ‘look, this is what the EFCC is doing’, and giving them every support that you can. These are ways of institutionalizing. And it is that same process that we are taking in the public service – automation.
For example, look at all that we have done in the ease of doing business. The whole point of doing that is institutionalizing processes, so that when you come into Nigeria you can get your visa after applying online; so that Customs don’t have to sit around the airport, that is why we are putting in the I-check and we are putting all sorts of other processes. That is to institutionalize; it’s not a one-off process.”
On the national strategy for anti-corruption war, he said: “The national strategy is to ensure that public officers in particular are not able to privatize public finances. And how do we intend to achieve that? We intend to achieve that by ensuring that there is consequence for corruption and also by automating processes, removing discretion from individuals because if you don’t remove discretion from individuals the individuals can have discretion as to whether or not they will grant certain approvals through certain processes; then you continue to encourage corruption at one level or the other.”
Bashorun J.K. Randle
